Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank all the witnesses for their work and their presentations.
I would like to begin with Mr. Patry and follow up on what we just heard on pharmacare. Your brief does indeed redefine competitiveness and what competitiveness ultimately means. It's not just about tax cuts. It's not just about doing away with red tape. It's about moving forward with progressive policies.
You pointed to pharmacare. Our government has indeed launched an effort to better understand how pharmacare can be introduced in this country. That's no surprise. We were the party that put on the table and introduced public health care in Canada. I really think there's great promise here with pharmacare. I indeed do think that it would make us more competitive. I think it's something that not just the Canadian population is looking for, but Canadian businesses also, because of all the consequences that come from pharmacare. There are the cost savings. Also, when you have a healthy population, you have a productive population.
I want to shift away from pharmacare and look at immigration.
Mr. Bélanger, at the end of your remarks you spoke about immigration, but I wonder if you can tell us a bit more, from your perspective and from your organization's perspective, about the tie between competitiveness and immigration. For example, you talked about how, if we're going to grow our labour force, we have to look to immigration. Our government has indeed increased the number of immigrants who are coming to Canada, specifically economic immigrants, but I wonder if you could go into that discussion a little more on the tie between competitiveness and immigration and tell us any further thoughts you might have.